1. Field of the Invention
The disclosed embodiments of the present invention relate to a master-slave detection method and related circuits, and more particularly, to a master-slave detection method applied in an Ethernet wired transmission system and a related circuit thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional wired transmission systems, expensive wires are often employed for increasing transmission distance and speed and reducing the design complexity of receivers, such as the Fiber Optical network. There are standards such as Ethernet, however, which uses cheaper wires while still requesting a certain degree of transmission distance and speed.
In the conventional fast Ethernet (such as 100BASE-T, 1000BASE-T), two un-shield twisted pairs (UTP) are utilized for performing wired transmission. For devices at both sides, one un-shield twisted pair is dedicated for data transmission and the other is dedicated for data receiving at the same time when a link is up. There are other applications with even more stringent requests for cost and weight that hope to significantly reduce the complexity of network specification and cost of wires while retaining a wide bandwidth with a single un-shield twisted pair, such as One Pair Ethernet (OPEN) alliance. Two devices connected to each other by a single un-shield twisted pair are not applicable for the auto-negotiation mechanism, however, because of the collision problem which will occur as soon as the cable is connected. The auto-negotiation mechanism of the conventional fast Ethernet cannot be applied to allocate two devices in the single un-shield twisted pair system as a master device and a slave device.
Therefore, there is a need for a novel master-slave detection method to allocate two devices in a single un-shield twisted pair system as a master device and a slave device.